Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Explorations and Surveys in the Craters of the Moon Region, 1879-1937
OVERVIEW OF THE EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS OF THE SNAKE RIVER PLAIN

American explorers discovered the Snake River Plain during the nineteenth century as the nation expanded beyond the Mississippi River. They gathered information about the region, publicized their findings, and aided the country's understanding of this far western land for settlement and exploitation. Their endeavors also revealed the important role played by the federal government in sponsoring western exploration. For it was under the auspices of army and civilian agencies that a host of naturalists, surveyors, cartographers, geologists, and adventurers examined the western territory. In the process, they provided a broad, descriptive, and compelling record of this new land.

The history of the Snake River Plain's exploration, as with all of western exploration, demonstrated ties to national goals and culture, and unfolded through three major periods. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it was part of an imperial rivalry and competition for the West. In the middle nineteenth century, it was part of national expansion and western settlement. And in the latter nineteenth century, it was part of the great surveys, an era of intensive scientific reconnaissances and inventories. All told exploration helped to map the frontier, plot transportation routes for roads and rails, and inventory and investigate the region's wealth of natural and human resources. Although the end of the nineteenth century brought a close to the "frontier" in the minds of many Americans, and thus a close to exploration, geologists, among other scientists working for federal agencies, continued the mission in the early 1900s. They surveyed and studied the plain's, as well as the West's, resources and planned the course for their development and management.

The first official exploration of southern Idaho was undertaken by Captain Benjamin L.E. Bonneville in the early 1830s. Ostensibly on a leave of absence from the military to enter the fur trade, Bonneville was carrying out explicit instructions from the War Department to explore the Far West, paying attention to its natural history, native tribes, soils, minerals, geology, geography, topography, and climate. Based on this information, some historians believe that Bonneville engaged in more than the fur business and was actually a "spy" for the cause of national expansion. In 1832 he set out from western Missouri for the Rocky Mountains, his course taking him to the Salmon River Mountains by way of South Pass, making him the first to lead wagons through this famous emigrant route. The following summer, Bonneville attended the annual fur traders' rendezvous held at the Green River in present-day Wyoming, and that winter turned west and crossed the Snake River Plain. Intent on reaching Fort Vancouver at the mouth of the Columbia River, he followed the Astorian's route to Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia. Turned back there by the Hudson's Bay Company, he retraced his route to the Portneuf River on the southern rim of the plain, where he arrived in early June and continued on to the Bear River Valley. In the fall, he repeated his trip to Fort Walla Walla with the same results, returned to winter in the upper Bear River Valley, made a final hunt the following spring, and then left the Snake River country. In all likelihood, his persistence reflected his so-called "spy" mission, one in which he was to assess the British strength and operations in the Oregon country, contact native tribes, and evaluate the region's resources. [1]

Bonneville produced two maps of his journeys, and for their time, they ranked among the most important. In addition, his descriptions of the Snake River country, recorded in his journals and published by Washington Irving, offered some of the first portraits of the region. The plain, particularly the Craters country, was depicted as a "desolate and awful waste," with little redeeming qualities, save a wild and majestic nature. Rather than dismissing the region altogether, Irving wrote that he and Bonneville looked "forward with impatience for some able geologist to explore this sublime but almost unknown region." [2]

Irving's statement anticipated the contribution of naturalists and scientists to the body of growing knowledge about the Snake River Plain. As a member of Nathaniel J. Wyeth's fur trading expedition, John Kirk Townsend was the first zoologist to cross the lava country in 1834. An ornithologist, Townsend was accompanying British botanist Thomas Nutall across the continent. Townsend's observations offered an important contrast to those of his fellow travelers, for he expressed an interest in the origins and composition of the lava that at times posed a great impediment to his company's progress. While on the way to the Portneuf River in early July, Townsend noted, for example, that the country was mostly arid and poor. "On the wide plain," he observed "large sunken spots, some of them of great extent, surrounded by walls of lava, indicating the existence, at some very ancient date, of active craters." Attempting to date these eruptions at a time before Darwinian evolution theory, the naturalist believed they were "antediluvian," dating from before "the present order of creation." Townsend also reported that high walls of lava and basaltic dykes were exposed on the hillsides, and the "juxtaposition" of these "enormous masses" formed "many large and dark caves." [3 ]

Beginning in the 1840s, the federal government increased the exploration of the Snake River Plain when it launched its great reconnaissance of the Far West to expedite the national goal of western expansion. Exploration thus embodied the desires of the nation's leaders to acquire new territory, locate suitable railroad routes across the continent, inventory and assess the region's resources for development, and increase American knowledge of the West. [4]

The explorers and scientists who embarked on these investigations did so under the sponsorship of the navy and army. In the Pacific Northwest, the government engaged in exploration from two directions, one by sea from the West Coast and one by land from the east. Since it was landlocked, the Snake River Plain was assessed from the ground by the famed explorer John C. Fremont. A member of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, he surveyed and mapped the emigrant trail to Oregon, which took him across the plain in the early 1840s. He set forth from Independence, Missouri, in the spring of 1843 with a party of forty men. Known popularly as the "Great Pathfinder," Fremont reached the Snake River country in September 1843; he stopped at Fort Hall, and then marched down the Snake and across the plain to the Columbia River and Oregon. [5]

Although he was not the first explorer to traverse the barren wastes of the Great Basin, Fremont was its true discoverer. He named it and recognized that it included parts of what are today southern Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. And as a discoverer and more so as a publicist for expansion, Fremont produced a map and a report of his 1843- 1844 trek in order to promote western migration. Charles Preuss, Fremont's cartographer, drew what was considered the "first great map of the West," giving a detailed route of the Oregon Trail, exact distances, river crossings, landmarks, and native tribes. The map accompanied Fremont's report to Congress. Lauded as masterful, monumental, and comprehensive, the report was widely published and distributed, and touted as influencing and informing a broad audience, from westbound emigrants to European naturalists. [6]

As part of its program for westward expansion, following the acquisition of Oregon, Texas, and California, Congress authorized surveys for a Pacific railroad route by the Topographical Corps in 1853. This impressive reconnaissance, conducted by military explorers and civilian scientists, produced not only reports of the best routes but also some of the best scientific examinations of the West's flora, fauna, and geology of the time. The expeditions covered sections of Idaho under the northern survey led by Isaac I. Stevens, the new governor of Washington Territory. Stevens' survey went far north of the Snake River Plain charting routes across Idaho's panhandle. Although Stevens favored a northern route, members of his own survey party and many citizens of Washington Territory disagreed with his views. The route was impractical and expensive because it crossed high mountains; for this reason many residents of the Pacific Northwest favored a more southerly route following the general direction of the emigrant trail from Puget Sound to South Pass. To this end, the legislature of Washington Territory hired civilian engineer Frederick W. Lander to survey the route in 1854. Lander, who had been a member of Stevens' party, reported favorably on the route, and his report was included in the final publication of the Pacific Railroad Reports. [7]

During the 1860s and 1870s, the last efforts to explore the Snake River Plain were undertaken by Clarence King and Ferdinand V. Hayden, the former sponsored by the army, the latter by the Interior Department's United States Geological Survey of the Territories. King's Geological and Geographical Exploration of the 40th parallel (1867- 1872) brought him briefly to southern Idaho in 1868 when he journeyed north from Utah to see the Snake River and its awesome canyons for his first time. Having traveled over the emigrant trail and through the dreary scenery of sage and sand, King viewed the spectacular Shoshone Falls and was deeply moved. He described his trip as "a monotony of pale blue sky, olive and gray stretches of desert, frowning walls of jetty lava, deep beryl green of river-stretches, reflecting, here and there, the intense solemnity of the cliffs, and in the centre a dazzling sheet of foam." [8 ]Although King found no evidence of coal near the river, which had been the reason for his visit, he and his party camped on the cliff overlooking the falls to enjoy the sublime scene. So inspired by this sight, the geologist wrote an article about his experience for Bret Harte's Overland Monthly. [9]

Hayden's surveys, sent in advance of and as an aid to settlement of the West, skirted the eastern Snake River Plain over fur trading routes leading from the vicinity of Fort Hall to the Yellowstone country in 1871 and 1872. With exploration of Yellowstone National Park's grandeur as their primary goal, the surveys were important for the Snake River country because they assembled crews of able naturalists, scientists, topographers, artists, and photographers, all of whom recorded their observations of this unique territory and included it in their artistic and scientific legacy of the West. [10]

The surveys also signaled a change in exploration. Military-sponsored exploration closed with King's expedition, and civilian-agency sponsored exploration opened with Hayden's survey. Led by academic scientists, the surveys emphasized less the discovery and more the assessment of the nation's resources. All of this was symbolized best in 1879 with the creation of the U.S. Geological Survey, headed first by Clarence King and later by the renowned geologist-explorer John Wesley Powell.

In the wake of the great western surveys, much of the Snake River Plain still remained an enigma. But this began to change late in the nineteenth century. In 1879, Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie expressed an interest in the plain itself rather than what lay beyond or around it. Famed for his expertise in volcanic action, Geikie viewed the eastern edge of the plain while returning to Utah from an excursion to see the geysers of Yellowstone. He admitted that much of his journey had been over "bare, burning, treeless, and roadless desert." But from a geological perspective coming across the lava formations of the Snake River Plain was "one of the most interesting parts of the whole journey." [11]

Hugging the "margins of a vast plain of basalt," that stretched to the south and west "as far as the eye could reach," Geikie traveled for hours, thinking that the "plain had once been a great lake or sea of molten rock which surged along the base of the hills, entering every valley, and leaving there a solid floor of bare black stone." Overall, the lava flows appeared to be quite recent, as if they "had cooled only a short time ago," an appearance, he added, that was aided by the slow rate of erosion in the arid climate. Of particular interest to Geikie was the origin of the lava flows. It seemed that volcanoes were the source, but he could find no "visible cones or vents from which these floods of basalt could have proceeded." And thus Geikie concluded that massive fissure eruptions, rather than volcanoes, were the source for the volcanic plain of the Snake country and the Far West, This theory, he believed, also applied to the origin of the basaltic plateaus of Ireland and Scotland, his homeland. Geikie's encounter with the Snake River Plain and other vast lava fields of the West exerted such a powerful influence on him that it lifted the "mist from my geological vision," he wrote. [12]

Adding to the scattered scientific observations of the Snake River Plain, C. Hart Merriam, ornithologist and head of the Biological Survey, passed through the region in the fall of 1890. Merriam's interest was sparked by reports that much of this country had not been explored by naturalists. A member of Hayden's 1872 survey, he was conducting the first extensive biological survey of the mountain ranges north of the plain. He arrived in Blackfoot by train and from there covered country in the Salmon, Lost River, and Sawtooth mountains. Though he spent some time identifying its flora and fauna, Merriam had little to say about the Snake River Plain, except that it extended as far as he could see, level, covered with sage, and "dotted in a few places by lava cones and craters." The naturalist, however, made a special point of visiting Shoshone Falls, much heralded in popular accounts as the rival of Niagara, and found it "not half so grand or imposing" on the whole. [13]

The first and most comprehensive investigation of the Snake River Plain was conducted by Israel C. Russell in 1901. Russell worked for the Geological Survey and had participated in extensive explorations of the deserts and mountains of the West and Alaska in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His reconnaissance of the plain reflected the Survey's mission to study the water supply and irrigation possibilities for those vast sections of the West that required only water to transform them into productive agricultural lands. [14]

Both a skilled observer and facile writer, Russell was drawn to the remote and wild recesses of the country such as the Snake River Plain, the "wilder and rougher," in his words, "the better." He spent about two months studying the region between July and September, concentrating most of his efforts in the eastern section of the plain. Initially, Russell's work was to have been a water supply paper, but the plain's geology captivated him so much that it took over the report. At times, though, his report read like a promotional document because Russell was attempting to reduce "false impressions" of what the geologist called the "Snake River lava plains" or the "Snake River Desert." The Snake River Plain, he asserted, was not flat but had varied relief, and despite its desert appearance was vegetated and populated with wildlife. [15]

Writing to dispel common misperceptions about the Snake River Plain, he adopted ocean imagery to describe the landscape. The jagged, "naked lava" was surrounded by a ragged coastline, jutting headlands of mountains, and Big Southern and Twin buttes--ancient volcanoes and uplifts--that "rise as islands through the surrounding basalt." [16 ]Furthermore, despite the plain's relative flatness mountains boldly rose above it from several hundred to six thousand feet; the mountains themselves ranged from seven thousand to ten thousand feet above sea level. The undulating surface of the plain also ranged in elevation, averaging about three thousand feet in the west and from four to six thousand feet in the east. This latter section, lying between Big Southern Butte and the Lost River country, he called the plain's "broadest and most characteristic portion."

Sounding more like a booster than a geologist, Russell pointed out that there were positive aspects to the region's environment, in spite of the extreme climate of excessive heat and cold, wind and aridity, parched soils and dust-laden winds that "blow with such strength and constancy" so as to try a "person's nerves." Dry heat and cold were easier to withstand than in humid climates; the winds cleaned the country of snow; chinooks thawed deep freezes, and overall, "these climatic conditions," especially the dryness, resulted in a "healthfulness of the land," good for those with lung ailments. [17]

In a similar upbeat tone, Russell spoke of the plain's flora and fauna. Sagebrush grew "abundantly," he stated, and "we might say luxuriantly in the dry soil." Although the silvery-green leaves made the plains somewhat monotonous, sagebrush nevertheless demonstrated that the Snake River Plain appeared to be a desert only in the absence of water. Close examination revealed the flora to be "abundant and varied," for "many lovely plants" blossomed "in early spring, filling the air with fragrance, and in summer and fall the yellow of sunflowers and of the still more plentiful 'rabbit brush" highlighted the scenery with "broad dashes of brilliant color." Bunch grass also grew abundantly beneath the sage and formed a rolling prairie, supplying good pasture for livestock, especially in the vicinity of the three buttes. The presence of forests further diminished claims that the plain was a desert. A "thrifty growth of junipers" grew on the slopes of the three buttes, the forest extending east of them for 175 square miles. Along with some juniper, Big Southern Butte supported a "vigorous growth in the most favorable places of pine and firs." The most forested area lay on the western edge of the buttes, a few miles southwest of Arco for some fifty miles in an irregular pattern up to fifteen miles wide. It was "an open forest" of mostly pine and fir embracing the "Cinder Buttes" (Craters of the Moon). Finally, where trees grew, rich soil covered older lava flows and supported native grasses, creating a park-like setting, "a beautiful and attractive country." [18]

The presence of wildlife, again found primarily in the vicinity of the three buttes and the Lost River country, still further dispelled the desert image. One could find antelope, mountain sheep and goats, deer, and elk on the plain, as well as bear, coyotes, wolves, lynxes, and foxes, among other species. Where there were seasonal ponds and rivers, ducks and geese, among other waterfowl, congregated, and throughout the plain, grouse and other smaller birds were seen. [19]

Although Russell also portrayed the agricultural and settlement potential of the plain, he emphasized more its wilderness quality and aesthetic beauty. The plain's remoteness and aridity protected much of it from domestic sheep and overgrazing, and thus preserved its wildness. It was a wildness that should not be feared or loathed but appreciated. 'To lovers of nature and all who rejoice in scenes of natural wildness unmodified," he wrote, "or what is too frequently essentially the same thing, unmarred by the hand of man, the plains of southern Idaho present exceptional attractions." [20]

The geologist realized that first impressions of the lava landscape, primarily for those accustomed to a more humid and verdant East, would be negative. This was a common reaction during mid-day or mid-winter when the glare of the sun or the gray of the clouds rendered the plain flat and featureless. But for someone who spends weeks or months riding across the plain's "seemingly boundless surfaces," he continued, it is "found to have charms unthought by the casual passer-by." The time to view the plain was at dawn or dusk when the slanting sun beneath a clear sky cast all things in shadow bringing out "details everywhere on its surface." [21]

It was not simply that the landscape had definition but color. "When the sun is high in the cloudless heavens the plains are gray, russet brown, and faded yellow," he penned, "but with the rising of the sun and again near sunset they become not only brilliant and superb in color, but pass through innumerable variations in tone and tint." [22 ]Days began with cool blues on distant peaks rimmed with the rising sun, and as the sun rose, the colors deepened to violet and purple "of a strength and purity never seen where rain is frequent." All shades of purple bathed the arid lands. At sunset shadows and color reclaimed the landscape creating "a sea of purple on which float the still shimmering mountains." The clarity of the dry air made visual wonders of molten clouds and stars filling the night sky from "horizon to zenith." Cloud banks as well pleased the eye, building thunderheads that surpassed "the ability of even a poet to describe." [23]

After this sweeping and somewhat romantic view, Russell turned his attention to geology. Outlining the geological history of the plain, he determined that southern Idaho was made up of old rocks that formed a rugged, ancient land surface. After successive geological periods of thrusting, faulting, and erosion and flooding by lakes and river systems, the region began the "process of upbuilding" of which lava flows were a major contributor. He examined Big Southern, Middle and East buttes describing them as "mountain-like elevations" that break the monotony of the plain, visible from over a hundred miles away and familiar to many who traveled through the region. Russell identified Middle Butte as "an upraised block of stratified basalt," and Big Southern and East buttes as ancient rhyolitic volcanoes. He ascended Big Southern Butte, the highest of the three at an estimated elevation of about 2,400 feet. True mountaineering skills were necessary to climb the butte, Russell reported, but the territorial view from its summit was worth the climb, for much of the Snake River Plain's history "may easily be read in the splendid panorama." [24]

As the geologist surveyed the landscape, he theorized that the lava streams, fanning across the plain like withered leaves, flowed from the numerous volcanic cones and craters rather than one source. To his west he spied the "Cinder Buttes, among which a score or more volcanic cones are known to exist." With the exception of Cinder Butte, he counted about twenty craters on the broad plain, he said, and still more lay beyond his field of vision. Russell's was the first known observation of what is today Craters of the Moon by a geologist or other skilled observer. More importantly, the chain of cones and craters he saw influenced his belief that much of the lava covering the Snake River Plain poured "from small and inconspicuous craters, many of which have escaped burial by later eruptions and still exist as elevations." [25]

Based on his observations, Russell disagreed with the fissure eruption hypothesis favored by geologists like Sir Archibald Geikie, The hypothesis, while well founded, did not match his own experience, which led him "to conclude that many local eruptions from distant vents," both in the mountains and the plain, were the sources for the lava flows. While only speculating about the source of the plain's lava, Russell stated that the "Cinder Buttes" with their fresh appearance furnished "the most instructive illustrations of the nature of the eruptions which deluged a large part of southern Idaho." And for this reason, he devoted the majority of his field work and report to this area. [26 ]Russell believed that the Cinder Buttes offered a microcosm of the larger Snake River Plain, and it inspired him to return the following summer (1902) to continue his work. His visit, however, turned out to be only a rapid reconnaissance and a supplement to his previous investigation but foreshadowed future studies of the region. [27]

At the time Russell conducted his survey of the Snake River Plain, large-scale irrigation projects were getting underway in the Snake River basin, and the beginnings of farms and towns were emerging on reclaimed desert. By the 1920s about a million acres had been irrigated in southern Idaho when the USGS returned to begin a systematic study of the area's ground-water resources to aid in surface-water irrigation, in a sense carrying out the task Russell had undertaken twenty years earlier.

The Survey's Ground Water Division was in charge of the investigation and participated with the Idaho Bureau of Mines and Geology. Oscar E. Meinzer, head of the Ground Water Division, arranged the field work and conducted a reconnaissance of the Snake River Plain east of Twin Falls. Employed by the Survey, the geologist Harold T. Steams, who would become an authority on the Snake River Plain, helped study the surface and subsurface water resources of the Mud Lake basin beginning in April 1921. During the late 1920s, the Survey progressed into more quantitative research. Steams, for example, collaborated with fellow Survey geologist Lynn Crandall, the Idaho Reclamation Bureau, and the Idaho Bureau Mines and Geology on a ten-year study of the plain's ground water. [28]

On the whole, geologists during the 1920s and 1930s studied the hydrology of the plain, measured stream flows, surveyed natural reservoirs, aided federal water projects, and inventoried surface water, in addition to examining the plain's ground water supply. All of this served the practical purpose of opening up new districts to settlement, aiding landowners who irrigated their crops. Above all it helped make the most of the plain's precious commodity of water. These various of activities were reflected in the career of Harold Steams who, in addition to the above projects, worked as a mineral examiner for the General Land Office, investigated the Haggerman fossil beds, and conducted the first scientific study of what is today Craters of the Moon National Monument--expanding the territory Russell had surveyed at the turn of the century. During the late 1940s and 1950s, Stearns continued his work on the plain, mapping irrigation and water power projects below Pocatello. [29]